Food City

Purpose

You need more and more food as you shift focus towards military.  A full zerk castle requires 75k/hr food, a full knight castle can eat up to 150k/hr.

Examples

The maximum food/hr a food city can produce is a little over 174k/hr, and it looks like this.  This would require that you have a landlocked city surrounded by plains (not mountains, hills or forests.)  This will give you the maximum amount of lakes, which is 10.  The lakes will also need to be in exact positions of the layout.   You may notice that there are no purification or shipping mechanism, which is not realistic of an actual food city.

Typical food cities will look something like the examples below.  These are 3 of my actual food cities.  The first 2 are landlocked, the third is a water city, which understandably, produces less than the other two.

• Example 1 154k/hr 
• Example 2 158k/hr
• Example 3 151k/hr

How to build

The city below is a typical layout of a food city without any lakes.  This guarantees production of 143k/hr.  If your food city produces less than 143k/hr, you must have a mistake somewhere.  Add in lakes and modify a bit to get over 150k.  It takes practice to get the optimal layout.  If you are not sure, post a comment and i'll try to optimize your food city.

Layout: http://bit.ly/pAb8ZX

1. Demo all natural resources except lakes
2. Upgrade townhall to lvl 4
3. Build 40 temp cottages and upgrade to about lvl 6 or 7
4. Upgrade townhall to lvl 10
5. Build out your city, make sure to include the marketplace and moonglow tower
6. Once all permanent buildings are at lvl 10, demo the temp cottages and replace with a permanent building

Mage Castle

Mage is my favorite type of unit to attack other castles.  It's arguably, the most powerful offensive unit in the game.  Mages also provide a different type of attack, magic, that's harder to defend.  Their downside is their inferiority for raiding and plundering (they only carries half the goods berserkers would carry)

• Layout: http://bit.ly/nus67G
• Max Troop Cap: 280K mages
• Recruitment Time:  7sec/mage
• Storage: 575k wood/stone/iron 1.3mil food
• Purification/shipping capabilities
• Requires: ministers, 35k food/hr

How to Build
Similar to Berserker castle, the only difference is the trade minister and defense minister setting.  Set trade minister to 200k wood, 220k stone, 500k iron, 1mil food.  Set auto recruit to 280k mages

How to Build a Kick-ass Berserker Castle

Berserker is your most basic type of unit in the game.  They're my favorite because they're fast to recruit, cheap to make, good for raiding and is generally pretty good offensive troops.  My berserker castle below.

• Layout: http://bit.ly/p15NvV
• Max Troop Cap: 300K Bersekers
• Recruitment Time:  3sec/zerk
• Storage: 775k wood/stone 1.9mil iron/food
• Purification/shipping capabilities
• Requires: ministers, 75k food/hr

How to Build

1. Copy the full link (not the short URL) to the layout of this castle and overlay it on your city.  You'll need LoU Tweaks.
2. Set trade minister with resource targets at: 200k wood, 220k stone, 1mil iron, 1mil food. Request missing resource from nearby hub.  Surplus goes back to hub
3. Set building mister to auto upgrade, except for cottages
4. Set target army at 300k berserkers, auto upgrade walls and towers
5. Upgrade townhall to lvl 4.
6. Build 40 temp cottages and upgrade to lvl 6 or 7, depending on how fast you want to build the castle
7. Upgrade townhall and add permanent buildings, as shown in the layout.   Make sure you build storage, marketplace, moonglow tower some time early on.  Don't build a castle yet
8. Upgrade walls and towers to lvl 10.  
9. When all existing permanent buildings are at level 10, delete 8 cottages and add 8 permanent buildings
10. Build a castle and upgrade all building to 10

Of Note:

• Don't build a castle until you have enough resources to build it and enough food to support it
• This castle requires that you have ministers.  If you don't have minister, add food in the castle.
• Require 75kfood/hr.  I'll show you how to make a food city in a later post
• This castle should be landlocked (not on water)
• You should also have adequate defenses in case it's attacked.  Unless you're on a secure continent.

How to build a Lord of Ultima resource city

I'm going to show you how to build a resource city that produces 80k/hr.  I am still amazed at the number of badly built cities out there.  I dread taking over lawless cities and cringe at cities that produce at less than half its potential because the owner didn't know what they're doing.  It's quite simple actually.  Here's how.

1.  Pick an area that's surrounded by natural resources.  In the regional view, you'll see the green fuzzy areas, those are forests, yellow bumpy things are hills and silvery rocky things are mountains, and the empty areas are plains.  You also get more if they are perpendicular to your city then diagonally.  The new city should also be close to your existing cities.

• forest = more wood
• hills = more stone
• mountains = more iron
• plains = more lakes (better for food cities)

Depending what resources you need the most, you should find an area that has the resources you need.  For example, when you just started, you need mostly wood, stone and a little of iron and food.  The spot below would give you a lot of wood, some stone and a bit of iron nodes and a couple of lakes.

2.  Use the autoplanner.  

• This is a city I just founded today (not in the same location as above) http://bit.ly/nz5ZcM.  This is empty without any building
• I use the autoplanner  at http://2.latest.loof78.appspot.com/lou_city and the following arguments:

• I got this http://bit.ly/oABcRX

3.  Tweak it a little to add a couple of farms for food, a warehouse for storage, a marketplace shipping and a moonglow tower for purification.  The final layout is this http://bit.ly/o2Okz6

• 55k/hr wood, 22k/hr stone, 5.6k/hr iron, 3.5/hr food.  85k/hr total production
• 2000% construction speed at max
• 1.1million wood storage, 375k stone/iron/food storage
• shipping and purification abilities

System of Hubs for Palace Donation

You do not need this until later in the game, when donation to palaces is the focus.  It's most useful when donating to places lvl 4 or more.  Each city can ship out 16 million in resource in 1 shipment.  If you have 10 cities, that's 160 million resources!  You can fill a level 1-3 palace in 1 wave!!!

You need at least 2 cities, but you may want to build as many as 10 or more.  Build these cities as close together as you can to cut down shipping time.

City 1: See Palace Hub
When use in the system of hubs, this city should not be used to send resources to palaces manually.  Carts should be available to fill cities 2-10.

City 2-10: Shipping http://bit.ly/oXElhX
Set wood/stone level at 8 million each.  With 16,600 carts, you can ship out all 16 million in 1 shipment.  This city can be on water or landlocked.